View Full Version : EFFECTS OF ECSTACY (DRUG)?
I was wondering if there was anyone who suffers from panic disorder who thinks it may be related to having taken the drug ecstacy, that there could be some a delayed effect or flashback like from LSD / PTSD.
I'm not referring to direct narcotics-induced panic/psychosis.
Whenever I have a panic I am always reminded of my one long-past and terifying experience of taking ecstacy. My psychiatrist dismissed the idea.
I've always been anxious but I was wondering if this experience may have openned some sort of door in my brain and if anyone had had a similar experience...
RobyBaggio18
05-11-05, 01:05
I had the same thing a few years ago.
Opening doors in brains, load of crap. Drugs are so poorly written about, most of the information is put there to be offputting.
Taking drugs stimulates the nervous system, much to the effect of anxiety. I had a bad experience on ecstacy that caused panic, but it was just a trigger. Anything can be a trigger, car crash, operation, falling over on the pavement. The similarity between having a panic attack and coming up off ecstacy or starting a trip are nearly the same.
Its just a trigger I'm sure and its just anxiety I'm sure.
hi christian,,
NO way does anything come back to haunt the only thing it is is your fear of what you did long ago dont let it scare you thinking about it,,
i took magic mushrooms a long time ago and had a really bad time on them ((bad trip)) and 15 years later when i started my panic attacks immediatly i related it to drugs from my past because i was looking for an explination to why i was feeling like this but i have done so much reasearch in to it and talked to countless therapists and it was just me looking for an answer and the drugs past thing seemed to be the easiest thing to blame,,,rather than looking at my life now to find what was wrong,,
so please mate dont let the drugs thing bother or scare you ok:),
all the best ,,
travor:D
I do maybe think that drug taking does have soemthing to do with it, I could be wrong. It just that when I was 12 I starting drinking and smoking hash then when I was 14 I was introduced to ecstacy! I loved it, I was taking it just about every day and the days when I couldn't get it I was looking and drinking more to compensate! I was badly addicted untill one night I had a bad one! When everyone else was smaking and starting to get the high I just started to feel really really really hot and sick, when I get like that I just want to go to sleep! but with being on the E I couldn't. I suppose I did go into panic and went home very quietly as my mum was up stairs sleeping. I just lay on the living room floor under the fan to keep me cool thinking that I was going to die and how my mum was going to find me and be really dissapointed! That was the most horrible experiance I had on them and it made me stop them. So then I just moved on to other things [V]. I do think that drug taking has played a part in how I am, as I have no self confidence I never have. Thats why I took drugs and drank to become the person that everyone liked!
That experiance could very well be where my fear of dying started, I don't really know, probably will cover this with my councerllor.
Take Carexx
Claire
i believe street drugs do have something to do with it! they have always said it leads to paranoia.
when you have your first panic attack they says it is always triggered by something, no matter how little from the past. i believe your bad time on a pill probably was the trigger, and has opened up the "door" for your panics to come through.
my childhood wasnt great and my counsellor has put mine down to my past. i hae a good life and good mates and have openly excepted and delt with my childhood. one night me and my mates had a made 1 and done an 8th of coke and i remember being in bed trying to breathe.
i believe that was my point of breaking too.
I rarely do anything anymore, definatly not pills. The thaught makes me want to be sick, what i have done to my body.
I hope this helps, feel free to pm anytime.
xxxx
"To change your world is to change your thaughts":D
hi i totally think my panic is related to my taking e's. when i panic 90% of the time it is the feeling im on e's or the thoughts of when i was on them. they totally screw with your brains and they have totally screwed mine...well and truely. your not alone on this xxxxx. take care.x.
dmcgovern
neonpink_smurf
06-11-05, 19:34
I had this worry too and I definitely have been reassured and believe that drugs have nothing to do with how you're feeling now, I got scared one time a few weeks ago and it reminded me of a feeling i got on a drug about 5 yrs ago and i associated with that, i told my boyfriend that i must only be feeling it because of that time and he reassured me that the feeling i had was just me being scared and it is the feeling i always have when scared its just my mind is associating it with that time.
I reckon that anxious people should not take drugs as we will worry about what its doing and we get all these scare stories in the press that freak us out about them.
This feeling you're getting is like health anxiety, like worrying that you have a brain tumour.
you've picked on a feeling you had and associate it with this ne panic feeling because of fear..
I agree with Trevor i think his post may make a lot more sense thean mine.
I felt scared that drugs was the reason for my feelings, but i know well that they are not.
RobyBaggio18
07-11-05, 09:46
<b id="quote">quote:</b id="quote"><table border="0" id="quote"><tr id="quote"><td class="quote" id="quote">hi i totally think my panic is related to my taking e's. when i panic 90% of the time it is the feeling im on e's or the thoughts of when i was on them. they totally screw with your brains and they have totally screwed mine...well and truely. your not alone on this xxxxx. take care.x.
dmcgovern
<div align="right">Originally posted by denise84 - 05 November 2005 : 22:19:55</div id="right">
</td id="quote"></tr id="quote"></table id="quote">
Don't mean to be offend anyone but this is ridiculous post, this doesnt help anyone.
I'm very sorry but in what way isn't it helping!
This is a forum for posting questions, this is a question! The question to him is relevent to his own experiances with anxiety! And to us that have replied so to me that is relevent!
Just because it doesn't apply to you specifically doesn't mean it's 'not relevent'!
Claire
My GAD started after taking a pill, then a week later going on a long holiday on my own.
During the intervening week, I developed palpitations which I put down to the ecstasy. The docs, however, said otherwise -- ecstasy is out of the system within a couple of days, and there's no sign of lasting effects on your heart, or evidence of such in large scale studies on ecstasy users.
I did a little homework on the issue at the time -- there have been various reports on the long term effects of ecstasy and depression in later life (i.e. a possible link between the two), although if you dig a little, you'll find that these have been largely discredited. I concluded that as thousands of people take it every week (published stats), it seems to me unlikely that if it were a cause of panic/anxiety it would have gone unnoticed.
For me, I really think the anxiety is caused by my thinking style rather than anything else. When I stop thinking negative thoughts, or I rationalise things, I get better. If I'd permanetly affected my brain with ecstasy, surely this wouldn't be the case.
Hope this helps! :D
Henry
im offended, yeah there are conflicting answers BUT its a good debate. Have you ever experienced taking E or what ever. ALL our thaughts and comments are very relevent, we can say what we like, just talking about this with other people who have been in a similar situation made me feel better.
RobyBaggio18
07-11-05, 18:38
Right,
I need to apologise for my previous post. I misread that post and completely jumped the gun. I did actually think that denise had said that everyones brains were screwed up.
I have been through this and my anxiety was fuelled by this. I spent months and months researching ways that i had damaged my brain when it was clearly anxiety. I think If i hadn't filled my head with so much crap then i would've saved myself 12 months of recovery.
Trev's post makes a lot of sense, dont fall into the trap i did. Anxiety is anxiety, dont go searching backwards for things that caused it, move forward and use the tools to recover. Also neon pink smurf makes a good point about association.
Drugs (especially LSD and pills) do make you anxious, a combination of them making the nervous system hyperactive and you not knowing what to expect. I made a complete recovery from this stress and so can everyone whos had a bad experience with drugs. I thought i was the only person that associated the symptoms of drugs with anxiety until i came on here.
Just be aware that most of the information around is released to be off putting against drugs, especially from the government. It's harsh and a lot of the time completely poorly researched. A lady at my workplace thought if you took ecstacy it makes you think you can fly (watching Nick Cotton from Eastenders no doubt)
If you haven't taken drugs for a while, then your body has probably recovered, leave that period in the past where it belongs. It'll only feed your anxiety if you don't.
Once again I'm sorry at my early petulant post, it was only when i read the replies I'd realised i'd put my size 9's in it.
roby, think before u type.
dmcgovern
nomorepanic
07-11-05, 19:59
Try these previous posts as well...
pls dnt judge.but did taking drugs contribute?? (http://www.nomorepanic.co.uk/showthread.php?t=2426)
Screwed myself up using drugs (http://www.nomorepanic.co.uk/showthread.php?t=5333)
advice on mixing citalopram and ecstasy (http://www.nomorepanic.co.uk/showthread.php?t=4824)
Nicola
i truly think that if you have a vunrability to panic/anxiety then drugs can be a tricker, i dont belive they irrevisably change your brain chemistry permantly.
I agree with Roby, it the trigger and could be anything, I would reckon if the trigger wasnt drugs then youd of got this beatting from anxiety somewhere done the line anyway as you had that window that it was going to jump through sometime.
Ive had some really bad expereinces on odd stuff about 15 years ago but as fine, it wa a head injury that was my trigger.
andy
thanks for your apology.
but i do wonder what evidence you have for your comments.
RobyBaggio18
08-11-05, 21:04
<b id="quote">quote:</b id="quote"><table border="0" id="quote"><tr id="quote"><td class="quote" id="quote">thanks for your apology.
but i do wonder what evidence you have for your comments.
<div align="right">Originally posted by kimmy - 08 November 2005 : 16:29:34</div id="right">
</td id="quote"></tr id="quote"></table id="quote">
because ive been there, been through CBT because of it. I was ill for 18 months because I thought id damaged my brain through LSD. Having come out of the other side and recovered I know that the bad experience I had was just a trigger. I spent 18 months of absolute hell thinking I was stuck in some kind of horrible trip. It was just anxiety doing its worst.
I just dont want people to fall into that trap.
Ive relapsed into anxiety not because of drugs (been clean for 4 years) but because I let a domestic situation get on top of me.
thanks evryone for the animated debate
Its just that I don't think that Anxiety just come from outer space or whatever
I personally think it comes from a disintegration of human relationships
prompting a re-enactment of the child's helplessness
which in turn is an experience that can be reintegrated by the adult mind
only with great difficulty
would it be correct to call that a kind of self-destruction?
where does that voice come from?
I could be wrong but I think Lacan thought Reality and Anxiety were interchangable terms... can anybody enlighten me?
The other reason why the drug thing concerned me is that the doctors were evasive and looked at me like I was a weirdo
or like some hopeless addict that couoldnt be helped
because like others i'd damaged my brain
It occurs to me now that they were most likely simply inept
i agree i believe anxiety comes from your childhood. a few good friends of mind are counsellors and they have also said this.
sorry roby i thaughts you said drugs wern't a trigger?????????
sorry roby i was getting muddled.
but there are plenty of stuff that says about drugs, not all of it saying its bad! but it does damaged the brain, takin an e kills millions of braincells each time...........i should know that 1:D
but on the flip side i see a man who took ecstacy and he had MS i believe and it did the opposite, he could walk, had energy, he could even do back flips!!!!
these days pills are cut up with so much crap they have to be bad, ajax? brick dust? rat poison?? and so on. the governmet have to say drugs are bad, untill they have controle over it all going on.
the likely hood of that happening is minimal to say the least.
I know you are not promoting drugs, I was one of there biggest fans for a long time. I was at many a festival dancin all day and night.
I truely believe drugs weaken your brain alowing you to think these negative and distructive thaugts
It's an interesting debate (if a bit old by now :-) but I also thought that my anxiety was triggered by a bad trip on E. I basically had a panic attack after one. However I was 23 at the time but had already had a panic attack and OCD thoughts at the age of 18 for one night, and then at 21 again just for one night even though I had not even heard of Ecstacy back then.
So even though I had not taken drugs I still got panic attacks and OCD, and then after the ecstacy it got worse and kind of chronic. I believe the drugs cannot bring on something that is not already there.
I think that my panic attack and anxiety was triggered by the after effects of my decision to try this drug a few months ago. It wasn't a "bad trip" or anything, physically I felt OK. In the days that followed I was constantly thinking about what a bad decision I had made and I felt guilty about what I could have put my family through if my experimentation went "wrong" and how I had treated my body really. Almost a week after trying it I had my first big panic attack.
To be fair, my life had been pretty stressful in the months leading up to me trying it and continues to be now but whereas before the incident I could handle all of life's pressures, now I don't feel I can as well. I can't really remember what it felt like before I tried it, all I know is that now I wake up everyday feeling "foggy" with all these frightening physical symtoms that never happened to me before I tried it.
hey,
wel i have had such a similar experience except mine was with smoking weed. i smoked it a few times and once i had a 'freak out' which sent me into panic..promised my self id never do it again but one thing led to another n i found my self doing it again, with in seconds of inhailing the last of it it sent me into full blown panic which lasted for 7hours:( i thought i was actually going to die...i was begging my friend to call for an ambulance but we were scared we'd get in trouble. i thought that was it n that i was now scitzo.
Anyway two weeks past n in those 2 weeks i didnt feel right n had similar feelings of when smoking the weed (which in actual fact was panic not affects from smoking) then one friday was tellin my frnd about my experience n just like re-living that night i had another full blown panic attack...i wasnt right from that day on for about 3-4 weeks i jus thought i was mental.
To sum up the story and as the doctors have told me its not the drug that has caused my panic attacks its association when ever i used to see ppl smoking or smell it i would panic... and bcoz that 7hours panic scenario scared me so much thats wat brought on my GAD!
So buddy ur fine:) its not the e's just your fear of them. and when i used to get PA it also felt like i was on the drug agen...
hope that helped sorry its so long lol
take care
lawzy xxx
I agree that drugs can lead to panic, or paranoia anyway...
I was a huge pot smoker from the age of 15 until 24 for almost 10 years i smoked it daily at first small amounts leading up to large amounts, in that time i also experimented with other drugs but never liked them enough to use regularly. I loved having a spliff after college/work and eventually it became my life. When i was out of work i would wake up light a spliff and thats how the day went on, they substituted cigarettes, food, everything really until i was smoking the same amount of spliffs in a day as i would cigarettes (about 15) I thought this was all great and it wasnt doing me any harm at all, until one day out of the blue i had the biggest scariest panic attack i have ever had in my life while i was stoned, i never realised how much it terrified me until i went to roll a spliff the following day and just sticking the papers together made me feel horrible, each and every time after that i would experience awfully high levels of anxiety so that was it i just stopped smoking it and went back to my ciggies. Thats been 18 months now and i havent ever smoked a spliff again. However for about 6 or more months after stopping it i was affected by paranoia.
With regard to ecstasy i have tried it on a few occasions, always having multiple pills at a time and loved it until like the hash experience i took a very bad trip on it and it scared the living daylights out me and again i never touched it again.
Sometimes 'avoidance behaviour' is a good thing....
*Broken_Mind*
28-12-07, 15:18
I have never taken Ecstasy but my Anxiety/Panic was triggered by a 'freak out' like Lawzy stated. I smoked more than my friends that one night as i normally didnt feel i'd had enough. My heart started racing and i can hear it, i was freaking out badly then i went into bad depersonalization, i thought i was about to die or go mad. Turns out the spliff was laced with crack :\ i didnt know at the time or i would NEVER have gone near it.
Ever since then i have had frequent panic attacks and bad anxiety, ocd and depression.
Stacey :hugs:
I sometimes have these fears, i smoked cannabis every day for 4years, had a really scarey trip on mushrooms and did a couple of bad E's. Mostly i know its not because of that, its because of my genes(alot of my maternal family are anxious) and my upbringing mixed in with surpressed anger and a need for control. Sometimes it does cros my mind though.
x x x
I regularly took ecstacy and speed in my teens. I was also smoking weed. Then one evening after smoking weed I came home and had a panic attack and it letrally felt like my personality had chnaged within seconds of that and I have never been the same since. I can look back on my childhood and see the damage my family situation had on me but it was the way it suddenly happened that freaked me out. I know esctacy affects serotonin levels and I know many people who regularly took it and wished they have never because of the long term mental effects. Its very frustrating but thank God for forums like these where there are people that understand!
Hi,
I won't lie i've dabbled in LSD, Magic mushrooms & the old wackie backie in my teens:D . One thing i can say for sure is they definitely havn't helped. Wether its my root cause or not i doubt it, but like i say it doesn't help & iam glad quit all that long.... ago.
Cheers.
Pauluk - yay for teen dabbling!!! :D i'll give up when i hit 20 :D
had a bad experience with ecstasy - once as i started to come up i had a panic attack, asked someone to call an ambulance (of course they didn't).. It was very embarassing. It's definitely affected me for the worse, but its my own fault - i knew i had an anxiety disorder and took it anyway. i don't take it anymore.
I'm not anti-drugs by any means, i still like my weed and occasionally shrooms etc..but to take X or any other drug that makes me more nervous or tightly wound than i already am would be a very stupid idea.
xxxxxx elle
I had my first panic attack when I was driving along a motorway after having a few spliffs at a friends house. However my brian associated the fear and "flight or fight" repsonse my body had with the motrway, not the spliffs. So I then developed a fear of motorways, travelling, going out etc etc (Don't need to teach anyone how to suck eggs about the fear spiralling until you're agrophobic!!).
Reason for my story is because it is the association your brain makes with the "danger" it feels and what happened at the time. So if you had a panic attack whilst on crack it would be that, whilst on a bridge it would be that, whilst at work, on E's, at the zoo, on a first date.....It is the association that causes the fear, NOT the thing itself. So drugs do not "cause" your panic but if they were the association your brain made at the time then they will be the trigger from then on (until you then start to spiral and the fear/panic spreads to other things).
So do not think that if you hadn't taken drugs this never would have happened. Chances are you still would have suffered from anxiety/panic attacks but your brain would have anchored it to something else instead.
I believe all my panic and anxiety attacks are 100% because of my drug abuse, mostly ecstasy. I started eatting the stupid pills in 1999 and i ate a lot of them.....at the worst 30 pills in a sitting.....Panic started in 2000 and paxil fixed it for me.....then eventually i continued to do E and everything else but mostly E until last sept 2007......i quit paxil and effexor in 2006 SEPT and did E to the Extreme until sept 2007...after that....the panic is so bad i can't handle it and nothing has come close to fixing it, remeron, cipralex...clonazapam, ativan....nothing works good....
i have quit drugs totally but believe i messed my brain for good......i take 8 or 10 panic attacks with anxiety between for the last sept.....i've been to phycologist and CBTs session for month and nothing is working....
E is bad.......i believed it destroyed my serotonin neurons in my head and the med just can't recycle the remaining serotonin to keep me calm....not sure what else to do....any advised would be welcome......i haven't left my home in months....
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